


See The World

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Home and Away [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Supernatural
Genre: Clone Jack isn't really underaged, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 03:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6938233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "author's choice, any slash pair, attracted to the artwork before becoming attracted to the artist."</p><p>Jonathan O'Neill falls in love with Evan's artwork. And then Evan, and the way he sees the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See The World

Jonathan had been lying when he said he wanted to go back to high school, try embracing it this time around, had implied it was for the girls.

The girls were children compared to him, and his skin crawled at the mere thought of touching one of them in anything beyond polite friendliness.

Because he was emancipated, he was free to make his own decisions, so he held on until he was sixteen and old enough to petition for board release from school. They were horrified, because he’d had excellent grades, but he wasn’t going to sit through three more years of high school. GED and done.

He kept bankrolling the stipend payments the Air Force was sending and would keep sending till he turned eighteen, and he got a job at a local garage fixing cars. John Eric, who ran the joint, refused to let him do anything more complicated than an oil change before his first month was up. And then a man named Carl came in asking about a good place to get a plane engine checked and Jonathan, having received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the Air Force Academy before The Divide, offered to take a look at it.

“You know plane engines?” Carl asked.

John Eric raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“Some,” Jonathan said. He was sixteen, barely shaved twice a week, and had shoulders as narrow as a girl’s. But he was no longer Jack O’Neill. He didn’t have to play dumb. He could be whatever the hell he wanted. And what he wanted was to be everything Jack O’Neill had been too afraid to be. Still, he had to slide under the radar long enough to get what he wanted, so he hedged his bets with Carl.

The thing about old planes was their engines were like car engines, and someone with decent enough know-how and the power of YouTube could probably figure out how to fix a plane engine on his own. Jonathan didn’t know much about car engines, but he knew all about plane engines. So he rolled up his sleeves, asked politely to borrow some of Dean’s tools - Dean was John Eric’s older son and a prodigy mechanic himself at sixteen - and dove into the engine. It took him a couple of days, but he got it up and running.

Carl was happy, paid handsomely for the work, and John Eric sat down with Jonathan at lunch one day.

“When you came to me, you said you had a GED.”

“I do.” Jonathan munched on his sandwich.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“Not high school.”

“You said you didn’t have much experience with cars.”

“I don’t, but I learn fast.”

“Fair enough.” So John Eric gave Jonathan a raise and started letting him do work on real engines, and life was good.

Jonathan rented a tiny apartment close to the garage where he worked. Even though he was legally an adult, most people were hesitant to enter into big transactions with him, so he rode a bicycle everywhere and had a motorcycle and a car he’d bought for scrap and worked on in his down time. He built his tool collection slowly, and he saved his money from the garage in a completely separate institution from the one where the Air Force sent him money, and when he turned eighteen, he was going to move, buy a place of his own, and work till he had enough money to open his own shop.

He budgeted carefully, always made sure he had money to spend on some fun things. He had no friends his physical age, with perhaps the exception of Dean, but Dean was more interested in chasing skirts and partying, and so their relationship was limited to the confines of the shop and Dean occasionally wandering over to Jonathan’s apartment to help work on the motorcycle and the car. It was impossible for Jonathan to have relationships with anyone his mental age, and he resigned himself to his solitude.

That was all right, because to the world he was a teenage boy, and the world didn’t know what to make of the teenage boy who saved up money for his own tuxedo and season tickets to the symphony and opera and who wandered the art galleries and art festivals on the weekends. The university always had showcases of the art majors’ work, and Jonathan liked to see the beauty in the world. He knew full well how ugly it could be out there.

He kept up with his physical fitness, joined John Eric and his boys down at the range when he taught them how to use firearms, because John Eric was a Vietnam vet and former marine and believed his kids should know gun safety. Jonathan might have had a bit of a panic attack the first time little Samuel picked up a pistol, but the boy handled it safely and appropriately. Jonathan didn’t avoid Samuel for disliking him, but Samuel was a perceptive boy, and he didn’t hang around Jonathan much either.

Keeping up with his training, making sure he could defend himself, wasn’t the same as wanting to wade back into the war, but some nights he still woke up screaming. Iraq. Charlie. Ba’al. It was all nightmares.

He was a new person, and he wanted to see the world through new eyes.

The opera and symphony were expensive, and the other patrons tended to look at him askance when it was obvious he wasn’t being accompanied by some adult. Art galleries were free, especially since the owners of the galleries wanted people to come in and look and, more importantly, buy, and no one looked at him twice for lingering and actually studying the work.

Jonathan’s favorite art gallery was the one downtown next to Daniel’s favorite diner, not because he could hang around there in hopes of glimpsing Daniel but because the gallery featured Jonathan’s favorite artist. He could appreciate many styles and movements - cubism, fauvism, impressionism, pointillism - but he was a bit of a traditionalist at heart, and he was awed by an artist’s ability to imitate the real, like a photograph. Jonathan’s favorite artist could make anything come alive, whether it was real or not. According to the gallery owner, Sheila, Evan was based in Colorado Springs, but he traveled a lot, so he didn’t come into the gallery often, but he sent her new work frequently. Because it sold fast.

Evan had created an elaborate fantasy world of spiked castles, flying ships, planets with multiple moons and flora and fauna in otherworldly colors and forms (the tree whose leaves turned into butterflies that flew away at the end of summer was lovely), and he was telling a story, one that Jonathan hadn’t quite figured out. It took him a little bit to realize why he liked Evan’s art. It was like going through the gate, but there was no death, no intrigue, no war. No aliens. Just the beauty of each world. This was what the Stargates could have brought, in a perfect universe. Endless worlds, cultures, people to explore and study.

Daniel had thought Jack didn’t understand what he wanted for the Stargate program.

Jack had understood, had wanted it more deeply than anyone knew, but he was a soldier, and he had a job to do.

Jonathan wasn’t a soldier. He could love the beauty of these alien worlds, buy them and take them home and hang them on his walls and gaze at them and dream of that perfect universe and believe that, somewhere out there, SG-1 was blazing its way toward that perfect dream.

Jonathan scrimped and saved and even took on a couple of commissions - restoring an old-school Merlin engine - to be able to afford as much of Evan’s work as possible.

Jonathan was maybe a little in love with Evan, with the way Evan saw the world.

Jonathan had once been in love with Daniel Jackson, and Samantha Carter, and Sara O’Neill. These days he resigned himself to the fact that he would probably not be able to have that kind of love for at least another decade, when he could be himself and not look like a freak or an aberration, not draw life-altering suspicion down on his head. But he wasn’t Jack anymore, so he could have physical relationships previously off the table for him.

He’d made his own credentials for his black-ops legends, so making a fake ID was ridiculously easy. Passing himself off as twenty-one was easy enough when he injected some of that old commanding officer into his bearing and his gaze, whatever the youthfulness of his face. Kids could try to fake confidence, but Jonathan was no kid, and getting into gay bars was a breeze; he just had to pretend he was really rockin’ the twink look. He was careful to only drink enough alcohol to blend in (because he still had a teenager’s body and didn’t want to mess it up more than necessary; he knew how it would feel down the road), and he let attractive men pick him up. He never let them come back to his place, always went to theirs, and he had fun, but it wasn’t the same, and he would never let himself think it was.

Besides, he was in love with Evan and his fantasy world, and it would get him by until he was old enough to be more of who he once was (because he’d earned his old scars and memories, and even if he was no longer bound by them, he wanted the right to claim them, a right no one with his face had) and love someone who could understand him.

John Eric let Jonathan go early the day the money for the Merlin commission came in, said, “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

Jonathan wouldn’t, because that was foolhardy, but he planned on spending a good chunk of it at Sheila’s gallery. He changed out of his coveralls and into jeans and a t-shirt and sped over in his finally-finished car. He breezed through the doors, windswept, and made a beeline for Sheila’s desk, prepared to plunk his cash down in front of her and claim ownership of the piece he’d been dying to get his hands on, a painting from the view of one of the castle parapets out onto the midnight ocean, the moons high in the sky.

Only there was someone already at the desk, and Jonathan waited behind him, faintly buzzing with anticipation.

Sheila spotted him, smiled. “Jonathan!”

“Oh, no worries. Help your customer first,” he said, because his mama had raised him right.

“No, Jonathan, this is Evan. He came in person to drop off some more pieces.”

Jonathan’s heart skipped a beat.

The man turned, and he was -

Major Evan Lorne. SG-11. A geophysicist and surveyor. Colonel Marshall’s 2IC.

Only he was dressed in civvies and smiling, and he had blue eyes and dimples (had he always had dimples? Jonathan was a sucker for dimples).

“Hi,” Jonathan said faintly.

Sheila laughed. “He’s probably a little starstruck. I think he’s your biggest fan. Spends all his spare cash on you.”

Evan ducked his head, blushed. “That’s really flattering. I appreciate it.” He offered a hand. “It’s always nice to meet someone who appreciates my work.”

Jonathan shook his hand automatically. “I - your work is amazing. You’re very talented. You, uh, you back from traveling?”

“Just for a couple of weeks,” Evan said. “Art’s really only a hobby -”

“Damn good for a hobby.”

“And my day job takes me far away, so I’m only home once, twice a year these days.”

That didn’t sound like the SGC, unless he was stationed on a Prometheus-class cruiser? Even those servicemen should have had about the same shore leave as submarine and battleship crews.

“Well, I’m glad you made it home safely,” Jonathan said.

Sheila raised her eyebrows at him. “You got paid for the Merlin?”

Sheila Jonathan could handle. He started toward her. “I did. I want -”

“Why don’t you see what Evan brought before you make your decision?” Sheila smiled at him and stepped out from behind her desk. “Let’s go in the back.”

“So Jonathan,” Evan said, “what do you do, besides collect art?”

“I’m a mechanic,” he said. “I work for John Eric Winchester, over on the east side of town. I specialize in classic airplane engines, but usually I just help out with the cars.”

Evan looked him up and down. “How old are you? That’s pretty impressive.”

“I’m twenty-one,” Jonathan said, without thinking, because it was what he always said when an attractive man was trying to pick him up. Sheila thought he was only eighteen, so she rolled her eyes at him when Evan wasn’t looking, but she didn’t say anything.

Back in her office, she opened the massive crate leaning against the wall, and she and Evan began unpacking his paintings and sketches.

Now that Jonathan knew who Evan was, what he really did - or what he used to do, at any rate, Jonathan was a year and a half out of the loop - he looked at the paintings with newfound understanding. Evan was probably painting actual alien planets. And they were beautiful. Jonathan had always been disappointed by how the majority of them looked like Earth. Evan had captured the otherness of them, their unique beauty. How he managed to see those planets that way when he’d undoubtedly seen horror on the other side of the gate was incomprehensible, but Jonathan fell in love with him a little more.

He was still pretty sure he was set on that ocean painting (had the SGC run across some alien castles, then, beyond the occasional medieval-looking ones?) until he saw the fountain.

It wasn’t a fountain, not really. It was a stargate, lying on its side, with the event horizon shimmering in its surface, and a miniature version of the spiky castle rising up from the center. The stargate had been altered some. In place of the familiar hieroglyphic-style chevrons were clusters of illuminated dots, like braille or - constellations. Actual star formations. None that Jonathan recognized from the Milky Way. Perhaps Evan had made them up. Jonathan had no way of knowing how much Evan had made up, either to make his paintings free of NDA violations and marketable, or just because.

The one fountain was central, in a lush wooded forest, but there were other fountains in the background, smaller and distant, all stargates.

Jonathan cleared his throat. “How did you come up with...all of this?”

Evan glanced at him. “Did you ever read _The Magician’s Nephew_? Chronologically it comes before _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe_ , but Lewis wrote it last.”

Jonathan had read it once, a long time ago. “I don’t really remember it.”’

“In it, the professor from _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe_ is a little boy, and his uncle is a magician who discovers the method to travel to other worlds.”

Sheila looked enthralled by Evan’s words.

Evan continued, gazing at the painting of the fountain. “Narnia is just one world out there. And the White Witch, she came from a world that was dying.”

Jonathan thought of Sha’uri’s tale, about the creature called Ra whose race was dying.

“But the magician, Andrew, discovered magic by Morgan Le Fay, who had a box of dust from Atlantis that allowed Andrew to make rings which, when worn, would transport people to the different worlds. Put on one ring, jump into the pool, go to the world on the other side of the pool. Put on the other ring, return to the wood. And so, a wood with pools that lead to other worlds.” Evan smiled to himself, as if at an inside joke.

Jonathan suspected he knew at least part of the joke. “This one,” he said.

Sheila named a price.

Jonathan handed over all his cash.

Sheila counted it out, handed a couple of bills back. She made a note in her computer ledger, rifled through the cash some more, and handed a share of it to Evan, who looked very surprised.

“You walk around with that much cash on you?” he asked. “Is that safe?”

“I can take care of myself,” Jonathan said. He’d been doing it for a long time, in more ways than one.

Sheila smiled at Evan. “Well, I think that’s a fortuitous start to this round of sales. Why don’t you go see your friends, and I’ll get these ready for display tomorrow, all right?”

Evan nodded, tucking the cash into his wallet. “You’re the best, Sheila.”

She kissed him on the cheek, and Jonathan felt a flash of jealousy.

“No, darling. You are,” she said. To Jonathan, she said, “Let’s get this wrapped up and carried out to your car.”

“I can help,” Evan said. “It’ll give me a chance to say goodbye to the piece.”

Sheila glanced at Evan, then Jonathan, then said, “Sure. I need to go examine the space and see how things need to be re-arranged.”

Jonathan knew where her packing materials were, because he’d packaged up many a painting or matted sketch on his own.

“Say,” Evan said, “would you like to go out for a drink? After you get this home and get done with work.”

“My boss gave me the rest of the day off,” Jonathan said. “I took a pretty big commission so I could buy my next painting, and of course he got a good-sized cut, so he’s probably celebrating himself. But a drink would be nice.”

Evan was brave, being this bold with him, what with DADT and all, but Jonathan would never tell anyone, had no one to tell, and this was _Evan_ , whose worlds filled Jonathan’s dreams, painted old nightmares with new color and light.

“Sweet car,” Evan said, once they’d wrapped the painting and wrangled it through the doors.  
  
“Fixed it up myself,” Jonathan said proudly. “Oh, hey, my keys are in my pocket. If you just grab this corner I can reach them.”

Evan slid his hand along the edge of the painting, and his fingers brushed Jonathan’s before he said, “Got it.”

There was a spark of warmth in Jonathan’s fingertips before he worked his hand free from beneath Evan’s and fished in his pocket for the keys. He got the car unlocked, and they eased the painting into the back seat.

“Thanks,” Jonathan said.

“Welcome. So, drinks? Care to recommend a place?”

“My place,” Jonathan said.

Evan raised his eyebrows.

Jonathan stepped closer, but not so close his intentions could be read wrong (read right) by a casual observer. “I don’t usually do this, but -”

“Neither do I, but...yes.” And Evan smiled, and there were those dimples again. Evan went to get his own car so he could follow Jonathan home.

They carried the painting inside together, looking cool and casual. Jonathan told Evan to feel free to look around, see if he couldn’t figure out a good place for the painting while Jonathan closed all the windows and blinds and curtains.

Evan stared at his own paintings and sketches adorning the walls. “Sheila wasn’t kidding, was she? You are my biggest fan.”

“I appreciate the way you see the world,” Jonathan said, stepping up beside him and studying one of his favorite sketches, a meadow with a distant, primitive village in the tall, swaying grass.

“How do you think I see the world?” Evan asked.

“I think, despite the ugliness and horror out there, the cruelty and carelessness, you see the beauty. You see wonder and hope.” Jonathan glanced at Evan out of the corner of his eye.

Evan was looking back at him. “Who _are_ you?”

“Someone who needs a few more colors and a few less shadows in his life,” Jonathan said.

Evan leaned in and kissed him.

The kiss was like the last puzzle piece sliding into place. This was what Jonathan had wanted, had missed, had ached for every time he’d gone to a bar and gone home with a kind stranger. Jonathan moaned into Evan’s mouth, tugged on his waist, and then they tumbled to the couch. Jonathan wriggled, tangling their legs so they were pressed against each other just so, and then he ran his fingers through Evan’s soft hair. Evan pulled back and smiled at him briefly before leaning down again and nuzzling a spot behind Jonathan’s ear.

“This all right?” Evan asked.

“This is perfect,” Jonathan said.

The front door opened.

“Hey, O’Neill,” Dean said, “Dad says you borrowed his - what the hell is going on here?”

Evan pulled back with a muttered curse, clutching his unbuttoned shirt closed, but Jonathan could see his dog tags.

“Dammit, Dean,” Jonathan began, but Dean stepped into the den, hands curled into fists.

“Get the hell away from him,” he snarled at Evan.

Evan cast Jonathan a look. “You already have somebody? Because -”

“No, I’m not his boyfriend,” Dean spat, “I’m his friend. But you sure as hell better not be his boyfriend, because like me, he’s _sixteen_.”

Evan froze.

Jonathan took a deep breath, bit back a series of expletives. Then he said, as calmly as he could muster, “Dean, I invited him back here.”

“You said you were twenty-one,” Evan breathed, eyes wide with shock.

“I’m not twenty-one,” Jonathan said, and Evan flinched back from him. “But I’m not sixteen either.”

“Jonathan,” Dean began, but Jonathan cut him off.

“Get out.”

“But - he’s twice your age.”

“I said _get out_.” Jonathan hadn’t used that tone since he’d had to dress down an entire platoon of marines.

Dean, trained to his father’s marine drill sergeant tone, went still and small. Then he switched his gaze to Evan. “I’ll call the cops. I saw your dog tags. I’ll call your CO, make sure you get thrown out on your ass -”

“Don’t you dare.” Jonathan was on his feet and across the room in a heartbeat, had Dean trapped against the door frame. “You will turn around and walk away and never breathe a word of this, not to your father, not to your brother, not to the next girl you take up to Pike’s Peak for a make-out session. You hear me?”

Dean’s nostrils flared. “Is that what this is, a little don’t ask, don’t tell? Working out your daddy issues with this - this predator?” And then his eyes went wide. “Is that why you work for my dad? Because -”

“Evan’s not a predator,” Jonathan snapped.

Dean blinked. “Evan? Like -” He gestured at the paintings and sketches mounted on the walls.

“Yes, _Evan_.”

“Are you really only sixteen?” Evan’s voice was icy.

“That’s what it says on my driver’s license.”

“I have to get out of here. If anyone saw me, if anyone even _thinks_ they saw me - does Sheila know?”

“Sheila thinks I’m eighteen.”

Evan buttoned his shirt with slow, deliberate motions, concealing his dog tags once more. “If you really cared about me, really liked me, why would you lie to me like this? For a quick lay? You’re a good-looking kid. You could have anyone -”

“I wanted you.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t have me. Your friend’s right. One word to the wrong person and my CO throws me out on my ass.” Evan started for the door.

“I could make sure it didn’t happen,” Jonathan said.

Evan snorted. “How?”

Dean cast Jonathan a look.

Jonathan sighed. “My name is Jonathan O’Neill.”

That brought Evan up short. “As in - Major General Jack O’Neill?”

“They made the old guy a general, huh? What were they thinking? Did they leave him at the Mountain, or did they stash him in Washington, where he can get into less trouble? I can’t imagine he’d have lasted behind Hammond’s desk for long. He’d be backseat driving Carter’s team the entire time. Carter is in command of Team One, right?” Jonathan caught Evan’s gaze and held it.

Evan’s expression turned from anger to wariness. “Mitchell’s in command of...Team One.”

“Mitchell?”

“Cameron Mitchell.”

Jonathan didn’t recognize the name.

Evan narrowed his eyes. “Are you related to General O’Neill? I didn’t think he had any children.”

Jonathan closed his eyes for a moment, swallowed hard. “No, O’Neill doesn’t have any children.”

“However you’re related to him, that’s not going to save me. That’s going to make it even worse for me,” Evan said. “Let me past.”

“I know you were on a mining operation for a while,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know where you are now - not the same posting, if you get leave like you say you do. So I don’t know how aware you were of an incident with a rogue element of one of our allies.” He lifted a hand to indicate the average height of an Asgard. “Doing experiments that weren’t sanctioned by the science council.”

Dean was watching everything with wide eyes. Jonathan ought to shove him out the door and lock it behind him, but right now he was keeping Evan inside the apartment.

Evan’s brow furrowed. “I think I was...overseas...during that incident, but I came back for a briefing so I could get trained as a...fighter pilot.”

He had his F-302 wings, then. Jonathan said, “Did you hear what happened? How it all turned out?”

While most SGC personnel were quite skilled at talking around the classified nature of their work, neither Jonathan nor Evan were on steady footing right at this moment.

“I thought it was an issue of - mis-matched sizes,” Evan offered finally.

“It was actually a Xerox error,” Jonathan said.

It took a moment for Evan to untangle the implications. And then his eyes went wide, and he straightened up with a strangled, “Sir.”

“Jonathan,” Dean began again.

“Go. Please. And promise me you won’t -”

“Fine. But we have to talk about this.”

“When we talk about you applying for the Air Force Academy.”

Dean made a face. It had been a long-running battle, his loyalty to his Marine father, and his own uncomfortable thrilling in his own misunderstood brilliance. But he nodded, and he left, closing the door behind him.

“I should go,” Evan said.

“Please don’t.”

Evan shook his head. “I - you’re physically sixteen, legally sixteen, but you have the mind and memories of my commanding officer, the military leader of the entire Stargate program, not just the Gate Teams going out of Cheyenne Mountain.”

Were there gate teams departing from somewhere other than Cheyenne Mountain? How big had the program gotten since The Divide?

“Did you know it was me?” Evan gazed at him, piercing.

“When I saw you today, yes. But before, with the paintings, no.”

“Before, when I was on SG-11, did you -?”

“No.” Jonathan looked away. “There were rules and I’d been living by them for so long that I -”

“I get it.”

“And yet you came here with me.” Jonathan caught his gaze.

It was Evan’s turn to look away. “This side of me - the artist side of me - it doesn’t belong with the soldier side of me. I mean, out in Atlantis, everyone’s a little weird, and we’re all trapped there perpetually, annual leave notwithstanding, so I work on my art there, but I’m not supposed to see the world like this. It’s dangerous out there. Our enemies are technologically advanced and driven by animal hunger and no one would trust me if they thought I could idealize our existence like - like this.” He gestured at the painting of the wooded forest with crystal blossoms blooming out of the trunks. “You understand how I see the world, and you make it sound like it’s all right.”

“It _is_ all right.”

“It is for you, but I’m still a soldier.” Evan reached for the doorknob.

“Evan -”

“Come find me when you’re eighteen.” Evan walked out and closed the door.

Jonathan stared at the door for a long moment, then tore through his cupboards for his emergency stash of whiskey (which he’d only let himself touch on Charlie’s birthday). He got wasted, and then he puked, and then he called Dean and made him come over so they could talk about what it would take for Dean to get into the Air Force Academy.

“You look like crap,” Dean said. But he had the crumpled application Jonathan had printed off for him months ago.

Jonathan cast him a hairy-eyed look and beckoned him into the kitchen. They ordered pizza with everything on it.

“So, where’s...Evan?”

“Gone.”

“Is he coming back?”

“When I turn eighteen, I’m going to find him.”


End file.
